It is a very common thing now-a-days to meet people who are
going to "China," which can be reached by the Siberian railway in
fourteen or fifteen days. This brings us at once to the question --
What is meant by the term China?

Taken in its widest sense, the term includes Mongolia,
Manchuria, Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the Eighteen Provinces,
the whole being equivalent to an area of some five million square
miles, that is, considerably more than twice the size of the United
States of America. But for a study of manners and customs and modes
of thought of the Chinese people, we must confine ourselves to that
portion of the whole which is known to the Chinese as the "Eighteen
Provinces," and to us as China Proper. This portion of the empire
occupies not quite two- fifths of the whole, covering an area of
somewhat more than a million and a half square miles. Its chief
landmarks may be roughly stated as Peking, the capital, in the
north; Canton, the great commercial centre, in the south; Shanghai,
on the east; and the Tibetan frontier on the west.

Any one who will take the trouble to look up these four points
on a map, representing as they do central points on the four sides
of a rough square, will soon realize the absurdity of asking a
returning traveller the very much asked question, How do you like
China? Fancy asking a Chinaman, who had spent a year or two in
England, how he liked Europe! Peking, for instance, stands on the
same parallel of latitude as Madrid; whereas Canton coincides
similarly with Calcutta. Within the square indicated by the four
points enumerated above will be found variations of climate,
flowers, fruit, vegetables and animals -- not to mention human
beings -- distributed in very much the same way as in Europe. The
climate of Peking is exceedingly dry and bracing; no rain, and
hardly any snow, falling between October and April. The really hot
weather lasts only for six or eight weeks, about July and August --
and even then the nights are always cool; while for six or eight
weeks between December and February there may be a couple of feet
of ice on the river. Canton, on the other hand, has a tropical
climate, with a long damp enervating summer and a short bleak
winter. The old story runs that snow has only been seen once in
Canton, and then it was thought by the people to be falling
cotton-wool.

The northern provinces are remarkable for vast level plains,
dotted with villages, the houses of which are built of mud. In the
southern provinces will be found long stretches of mountain
scenery, vying in loveliness with anything to be seen elsewhere.
Monasteries are built high up on the hills, often on almost
inaccessible crags; and there the well-to-do Chinaman is wont to
escape from the fierce heat of the southern summer. On one
particular mountain near Canton, there are said to be no fewer than
one hundred of such monasteries, all of which reserve apartments
for guests, and are glad to be able to add to their funds by so
doing.

In the north of China, Mongolian ponies, splendid mules, and
donkeys are seen in large quantities; also the two-humped camel,
which carries heavy loads across the plains of Mongolia. In the
south, until the advent of the railway, travellers had to choose
between the sedan- chair carried on the shoulders of stalwart
coolies, or the slower but more comfortable house-boat. Before
steamers began to ply on the coast, a candidate for the doctor's
degree at the great triennial examination would take three months
to travel from Canton to Peking. Urgent dispatches, however, were
often forwarded by relays of riders at the rate of two hundred
miles a day.

The market in Peking is supplied, among other things, with
excellent mutton from a fat-tailed breed of sheep, chiefly for the
largely Mohammedan population; but the sheep will not live in
southern China, where the goat takes its place. The pig is found
everywhere, and represents beef in our market, the latter being
extremely unpalatable to the ordinary Chinaman, partly perhaps
because Confucius forbade men to slaughter the animal which draws
the plough and contributes so much to the welfare of mankind. The
staple food, the "bread" of the people in the Chinese Empire, is
nominally rice; but this is too costly for the peasant of northern
China to import, and he falls back on millet as its substitute.
Apples, pears, grapes, melons, and walnuts grow abundantly in the
north; the southern fruits are the banana, the orange, the
pineapple, the mango, the pomelo, the lichee, and similar fruits of
a more tropical character.

Cold storage has been practised by the Chinese for centuries.
Blocks of ice are cut from the river for that purpose; and on a hot
summer's day a Peking coolie can obtain an iced drink at an almost
infinitesimal cost. Grapes are preserved from autumn until the
following May and June by the simple process of sticking the stalk
of the bunch into a large hard pear, and putting it away carefully
in the ice-house. Even at Ningpo, close to our central point on the
eastern coast of China, thin layers of ice are collected from pools
and ditches, and successfully stored for use in the following
summer.

The inhabitants of the coast provinces are distinguished from
the dwellers in the north and in the far interior by a marked
alertness of mind and general temperament. The Chinese themselves
declare that virtue is associated with mountains, wisdom with
water, cynically implying that no one is both virtuous and wise.
Between the inhabitants of the various provinces there is little
love lost. Northerners fear and hate southerners, and the latter
hold the former in infinite scorn and contempt. Thus, when in 1860
the Franco-British force made for Peking, it was easy enough to
secure the services of any number of Cantonese, who remained as
faithful as though the attack had been directed against some third
nationality.

The population of China has never been exactly ascertained. It
has been variously estimated by foreign travellers, Sacharoff, in
1842, placing the figure at over four hundred millions. The latest
census, taken in 1902, is said to yield a total of four hundred and
ten millions. Perhaps three hundred millions would be a juster
estimate; even that would absorb no less than one-fifth of the
human race. From this total it is easy to calculate that if the
Chinese people were to walk past a given point in single file, the
procession would never end; long before the last of the three
hundred millions had passed by, a new generation would have sprung
up to continue the neverending line. The census, however, is a very
old institution with the Chinese; and we learn that in A.D. 156 the
total population of the China of those days was returned as a
little over fifty millions. In more modern times, the process of
taking the census consists in serving out house-tickets to the head
of every household, who is responsible for a proper return of all
the inmates; but as there is no fixed day for which these tickets
are returnable, the results are approximate rather than exact.

Again, it is not uncommon to hear people talking of the Chinese
language as if it were a single tongue spoken all over China after
a more or less uniform standard. But the fact is that the
colloquial is broken up into at least eight dialects, each so
strongly marked as to constitute eight languages as different to
the ear, one from another, as English, Dutch and German, or French,
Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. A Shanghai man, for instance, is
unintelligible to a Cantonese, and so on. All officials are
obliged, and all of the better educated merchants and others
endeavour, if only for business purposes, to learn something of the
dialect spoken at the court of Peking; and this is what is
popularly known as "Mandarin." The written language remains the
same for the whole empire; which merely means that ideas set down
on paper after a uniform system are spoken with different sounds,
just as the Arabic numerals are written uniformly in England,
France and Germany, but are pronounced in a totally different
manner.

The only difficulty of the spoken language, of no matter what
dialect, lies in the "tones," which simply means the different
intonations which may be given to one and the same sound, thus
producing so many entirely different meanings. But for these tones,
the colloquial of China would be absurdly easy, inasmuch as there
is no such thing as grammar, in the sense of gender, number, case,
mood, tense, or any of the variations we understand by that term.
Many amusing examples are current of blunders committed by faulty
speakers, such as that of the student who told his servant to bring
him a goose, when what he really wanted was some salt, both goose
and salt having the same sound, yen, but quite different
intonations. The following specimen has the advantage of being
true. A British official reported to the Foreign Office that the
people of Tientsin were in the habit of shouting after foreigners,
"Mao-tsu, mao-tsu" (pronounced mowdza, ow as in
how), from which he gathered that they were much struck by the
head- gear of the barbarian. Now, it is a fact that mao-tsu,
uttered with a certain intonation, means a hat; but with another
intonation, it means "hairy one," and the latter, referring to the
big beards of foreigners, was the meaning intended to be conveyed.
This epithet is still to be heard, and is often preceded by the
adjective "red."

The written characters, known to have been in use for the past
three thousand years, were originally rude pictures, as of men,
birds, horses, dogs, houses, the numerals (one, two, three, four),
etc., etc., and it is still possible to trace in the modified
modern forms of these characters more or less striking resemblances
to the objects intended. The next step was to put two or more
characters together, to express by their combination an abstract
idea, as, for instance, a hand holding a rod =
father; but of course this simple process did not carry the Chinese
very far, and they soon managed to hit on a joint picture and
phonetic system, which enabled them to multiply characters
indefinitely, new compounds being formed for use as required. It is
thus that new characters can still be produced, if necessary, to
express novel objects or ideas. The usual plan, however, is to
combine existing terms in such a way as to suggest what is wanted.
For instance, in preference to inventing a separate character for
the piece of ordnance known as a "mortar," the Chinese, with an eye
to its peculiar pose, gave it the appropriate name of a "frog
gun."

Again, just as the natives and the dialects of the various parts
of China differ one from another, although fundamentally the same
people and the same language, so do the manners and customs differ
to such an extent that habits of life and ceremonial regulations
which prevail in one part of the empire do not necessarily prevail
in another. Yet once more it will be found that the differences
which appear irreconcilable at first, do not affect what is
essential, but apply rather to matters of detail. Many travellers
and others have described as customs of the Chinese customs which,
as presented, refer to a part of China only, and not to the whole.
For instance, the ornamental ceremonies connected with marriage
vary in different provinces; but there is a certain ceremony,
equivalent in one sense to signing the register, which is almost
essential to every marriage contract. Bride and bridegroom must
kneel down and call God to witness; they also pledge each other in
wine from two cups joined together by a red string. Red is the
colour for joy, as white is the colour for mourning. Chinese
note-paper is always ruled with red lines or stamped with a red
picture. One Chinese official who gave a dinner-party in foreign
style, even went so far as to paste a piece of red paper on to each
dinner-napkin, in order to counteract the unpropitious influence of
white.

Reference has been made above to journeys performed by boat. In
addition to the Yangtsze and the Yellow River or Hoang ho
(pronounced Hwong haw), two of the most important rivers in
the world, China is covered with a network of minor streams, which
in southern China form the chief lines of transport. The Yangtsze
is nothing more than a huge navigable river, crossing China Proper
from west to east. The Yellow River, which, with the exception of a
great loop to the north, runs on nearly parallel lines of latitude,
has long been known as "China's Sorrow," and has been responsible
for enormous loss of life and property. Its current is so swift
that ordinary navigation is impossible, and to cross it in boats is
an undertaking of considerable difficulty and danger. It is so
called from the yellowness of its water, caused by the vast
quantity of mud which is swept down by its rapid current to the
sea; hence, the common saying, "When the Yellow River runs clear,"
as an equivalent of the Greek Kalends. The huge embankments, built
to confine it to a given course, are continually being forced by
any unusual press of extra water, with enormous damage to property
and great loss of life, and from time to time this river has been
known to change its route altogether, suddenly diverging, almost at
a right angle. Up to the year 1851 the mouth of the river was to
the south of the Shantung promontory, about lat. 34 N.; then, with
hardly any warning, it began to flow to the north-east, finding an
outlet to the north of the Shantung promontory, about lat. 38
N.

A certain number of connecting links have been formed between
the chief lines of water communication, in the shape of artificial
cuttings; but there is nothing worthy the name of canal except the
rightly named Grand Canal, called by the Chinese the "river of
locks," or alternatively the "transport river," because once used
to convey rice from the south to Peking. This gigantic work,
designed and executed in the thirteenth century by the Emperor
Kublai Khan, extended to about six hundred and fifty miles in
length, and completed an almost unbroken water communication
between Peking and Canton. As a wonderful engineering feat it is
indeed more than matched by the famous Great Wall, which dates back
to a couple of hundred years before Christ, and which has been
glorified as the last trace of man's handiwork on the globe to fade
from the view of an imaginary person receding into space. Recent
exploration shows that this wall is about eighteen hundred miles in
length, stretching from a point on the seashore somewhat east of
Peking, to the northern frontier of Tibet. Roughly speaking, it is
twenty-two feet in height by twenty feet in breadth; at intervals
of a hundred yards are towers forty feet high, the whole being
built originally of brick, of which in some parts but mere traces
now remain. Nor is this the only great wall; ruins of other walls
on a considerable scale have lately been brought to light, the
object of all being one and the same -- to keep back the marauding
Tartars.

Over the length and breadth of their boundless empire, with all
its varying climates and inhabitants, the Chinese people are free
to travel, for business or pleasure, at their own sweet will, and
to take up their abode at any spot without let or hindrance. No
passports are required; neither is any ordinary citizen obliged to
possess other papers of identification. Chinese inns are not
exposed to the annoyance of domicilary visits with reference to
their clients for the time being; and so long as the latter pay
their way, and refrain from molesting others, they will usually be
free from molestation themselves. The Chinese, however, are not
fond of travelling; they love their homes too well, and they
further dread the inconveniences and dangers attached to travel in
many other parts of the world. Boatmen, carters, and innkeepers
have all of them bad reputations for extortionate charges; and the
traveller may sometimes happen upon a "black inn," which is another
name for a den of thieves. Still there have been many who travelled
for the sake of beautiful scenery, or in order to visit famous
spots of historical interest; not to mention the large body of
officials who are constantly on the move, passing from post to
post.

Among those who believe that every nation must have reached its
present quarters from some other distant parts of the world, must
be reckoned a few students of the ancient history of China.
Coincidences in language and in manners and customs, mostly of a
shadowy character, have led some to suggest Babylonia as the region
from which the Chinese migrated to the land where they are now
found. The Chinese possess authentic records of an indisputably
early past, but throughout these records there is absolutely no
mention, not even a hint, of any migration of the kind.

Tradition places the Golden Age of China so far back as three
thousand years before Christ; for a sober survey of China's early
civilization, it is not necessary to push further back than the
tenth century B.C. We shall find evidence of such an advanced state
of civilization at that later date as to leave no doubt of a very
remote antiquity.

The China of those days, known even then as the Middle Kingdom,
was a mere patch on the empire of to-day. It lay, almost
lozenge-shaped, between the 34th and 40th parallels of latitude
north, with the upper point of the lozenge resting on the modern
Peking, and the lower on Si-an Fu in Shensi, whither the late
Empress Dowager fled for safety during the Boxer rising in 1900.
The ancient autocratic Imperial system had recently been
disestablished, and a feudal system had taken its place. The
country was divided up into a number of vassal states of varying
size and importance, ruled each by its own baron, who swore
allegiance to the sovereign of the Royal State. The relations,
however, which came to subsist, as time went on, between these
states, sovereign and vassal alike, as described in contemporary
annals, often remind the reader of the relations which prevailed
between the various political divisions of ancient Greece. The
rivalries of Athens and Sparta, whose capitals were only one
hundred and fifty miles apart -- though a perusal of Thucydides
makes one feel that at least half the world was involved -- find
their exact equivalent in the jealousies and animosities which
stirred the feudal states of ancient China, and in the disastrous
campaigns and bloody battles which the states fought with one
another. We read of chariots and horsemanship; of feats of arms and
deeds of individual heroism; of forced marches, and of night
attacks in which the Chinese soldier was gagged with a kind of
wooden bit, to prevent talking in the ranks; of territory annexed
and reconquered, and of the violent deaths of rival rulers by
poison or the dagger of the assassin.

When the armies of these states went into battle they formed a
line, with the bowmen on the left and the spearmen on the right
flank. The centre was occupied by chariots, each drawn by either
three or four horses harnessed abreast. Swords, daggers, shields,
iron-headed clubs some five to six feet in length and weighing from
twelve to fifteen pounds, huge iron hooks, drums, cymbals, gongs,
horns, banners and streamers innumerable, were also among the
equipment of war. Beacon- fires of wolves' dung were lighted to
announce the approach of an enemy and summon the inhabitants to
arms. Quarter was rarely if ever given, and it was customary to cut
the ears from the bodies of the slain. Parleys were conducted and
terms of peace arranged under the shelter of a banner of truce,
upon which two words were inscribed -- "Stop fighting."

The beacon-fires above mentioned, very useful for summoning the
feudal barons to the rescue in case of need, cost one sovereign his
throne. He had a beautiful concubine, for the sake of whose company
he neglected the affairs of government. The lady was of a
melancholy turn, never being seen to smile. She said she loved the
sound of rent silk, and to gratify her whim many fine pieces of
silk were torn to shreds. The king offered a thousand ounces of
gold to any one who would make her laugh; whereupon his chief
minister suggested that the beacon-fires should be lighted to
summon the feudal nobles with their armies, as though the royal
house were in danger. The trick succeeded; for in the hurry-skurry
that ensued the impassive girl positively laughed outright. Later
on, when a real attack was made upon the capital by barbarian
hordes, and the beacon-fires were again lighted, this time in stern
reality, there was no response from the insulted nobles. The king
was killed, and his concubine strangled herself.

Meanwhile, a high state of civilization was enjoyed by these
feudal peoples, when not engaged in cutting each other's throats.
They lived in thatched houses constructed of rammed earth and
plaster, with beaten floors on which dry grass was strewn as
carpet. Originally accustomed to sit on mats, they introduced
chairs and tables at an early date; they drank an ardent spirit
with their carefully cooked food, and wore robes of silk. Ballads
were sung, and dances were performed, on ceremonial and festive
occasions; hunting and fishing and agriculture were occupations for
the men, while the women employed themselves in spinning and
weaving. There were casters of bronze vessels, and workers in gold,
silver, and iron; jade and other stones were cut and polished for
ornaments. The written language was already highly developed, being
much the same as we now find it. Indeed, the chief difference lies
in the form of the characters, just as an old English text differs
in form from a text of the present day. What we may call the syntax
of the language has remained very much the same; and phrases from
the old ballads of three thousand years ago, which have passed into
the colloquial, are still readily understood, though of course
pronounced according to the requirements of modern speech. We can
no more say how Confucius (551-479 B.C.) pronounced Chinese, than
we can say how Miltiades pronounced Greek when addressing his
soldiers before the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.). The "books"
which were read in ancient China consisted of thin slips of wood or
bamboo, on which the characters were written by means of a pencil
of wood or bamboo, slightly frayed at the end, so as to pick up a
coloured liquid and transfer it to the tablets as required. Until
recently, it was thought that the Chinese scratched their words on
tablets of bamboo with a knife, but now we know that the knife was
only used for scratching out, when a character was wrongly
written.

The art of healing was practised among the Chinese in their
pre-historic times, but the earliest efforts of a methodical
character, of which we have any written record, belong to the
period with which we are now dealing. There is indeed a work,
entitled "Plain Questions," which is attributed to a legendary
emperor of the Golden Age, who interrogates one of his ministers on
the cause and cure of all kinds of diseases; as might be expected,
it is not of any real value, nor can its date be carried back
beyond a few centuries B.C.

Physicians of the feudal age classified diseases under the four
seasons of the year: headaches and neuralgic affections under
spring, skin diseases of all kinds under summer, fevers
and agues under autumn, and bronchial and pulmonary
complaints under winter. They treated the various complaints
that fell under these headings by suitable doses of one or more
ingredients taken from the five classes of drugs, derived from
herbs, trees, living creatures, minerals, and grains, each of which
class contained medicines of five flavours, with special
properties: sour for nourishing the bones, acid for
nourishing the muscles, salt for nourishing the
blood-vessels, bitter for nourishing general vitality, and
sweet for nourishing the flesh. The pulse has always been
very much to the front in the treatment of disease; there are at
least twenty-four varieties of pulse with which every doctor is
supposed to be familiar, and some eminent doctors have claimed to
distinguish no fewer than seventy-two. In the "Plain Questions"
there is a sentence which points towards the circulation of the
blood, -- "All the blood is under the jurisdiction of the heart," a
point beyond which the Chinese never seem to have pushed their
investigations; but of this curious feature in their civilization,
later on.

It was under the feudal system, perhaps a thousand years before
Christ, that the people of China began to possess family names.
Previous to that time there appear to have been tribal or clan
names; these however were not in ordinary use among the individual
members of each clan, who were known by their personal names only,
bestowed upon them in childhood by their parents. Gradually, it
became customary to prefix to the personal name a surname, adopted
generally from the name of the place where the family lived,
sometimes from an appellation or official title of a distinguished
ancestor; places in China never take their names from individuals,
as with us, and consequently there are no such names as Faringdon
or Gislingham, the homes of the Fearings or Gislings of old. Thus,
to use English terms, a boy who had been called "Welcome" by his
parents might prefix the name of the place, Cambridge, where he was
born, and call himself Cambridge Welcome, the surname always coming
first in Chinese, as, for instance, in Li Hung- Chang. The Manchus,
it must be remembered, have no surnames; that is to say, they do
not use their clan or family names, but call themselves by their
personal names only.

Chinese surnames, other than place names, are derived from a
variety of sources: from nature, as River, Stone, Cave; from
animals, as Bear, Sheep, Dragon; from birds, as Swallow, Pheasant;
from the body, as Long-ears, Squint-eye; from colours, as Black,
White; from trees and flowers, as Hawthorn, Leaf, Reed, Forest; and
others, such as Rich, East, Sharp, Hope, Duke, Stern, Tepid, Money,
etc. By the fifth century before Christ, the use of surnames had
definitely become established for all classes, whereas in Europe
surnames were not known until about the twelfth century after
Christ, and even then were confined to persons of wealth and
position. There is a small Chinese book, studied by every schoolboy
and entitled The Hundred Surnames, the word "hundred" being
commonly used in a generally comprehensive sense. It actually
contains about four hundred of the names which occur most
frequently.

About two hundred and twenty years before Christ, the feudal
system came to an end. One aggressive state gradually swallowed up
all the others; and under the rule of its sovereign, China became
once more an empire, and such it has ever since remained. But
although always an empire, the throne, during the past two thousand
years, has passed many times from one house to another.

The extraordinary man who led his state to victory over each
rival in turn, and ultimately mounted the throne to rule over a
united China, finds his best historical counterpart in Napoleon. He
called himself the First Emperor, and began by sending an army of
300,000 men to fight against an old and dreaded enemy to the north,
recently identified beyond question with the Huns. He dispatched a
fleet to search for some mysterious islands off the coast, thought
by some to be the islands which form Japan. He built the Great
Wall, to a great extent by means of convict labour, malefactors
being condemned to long terms of penal servitude on the works. His
copper coinage was so uniformly good that the cowry disappeared
altogether from commerce during his reign. Above all things he
desired to impart a fresh stimulus to literary effort, but he
adopted singularly unfortunate means to secure this desirable end;
for, listening to the insidious flattery of courtiers, he
determined that literature should begin anew with his reign. He
therefore determined to destroy all existing books, finally
deciding to spare those connected with three important departments
of human knowledge: namely, (1) works which taught the people to
plough, sow, reap, and provide food for the race; (2) works on the
use of drugs and on the healing art; and (3) works on the various
methods of foretelling the future which might lead men to act in
accordance with, and not in opposition to, the eternal fitness of
things as seen in the operations of Nature. Stringent orders were
issued accordingly, and many scholars were put to death for
concealing books in the hope that the storm would blow over.
Numbers of valuable works perished in a vast conflagration of
books, and the only wonder is that any were preserved, with the
exception of the three classes specified above.

In 210 B.C. the First Emperor died, and his youngest son was
placed upon the throne with the title of Second Emperor. The latter
began by carrying out the funeral arrangements of his father, as
described about a century later by the first and greatest of
China's historians: --

"On the 9th moon the First Emperor was buried in Mount Li, which
in the early days of his reign he had caused to be tunnelled and
prepared with that view. Then, when he had consolidated the empire,
he employed his soldiery, to the number of 700,000, to bore down to
the Three Springs (that is, until water was reached), and there a
firm foundation was laid and the sarcophagus placed thereon. Rare
objects and costly jewels were collected from the palaces and from
the various officials, and were carried thither and stored in huge
quantities. Artificers were ordered to construct mechanical
crossbows, which, if any one were to enter, would immediately
discharge their arrows. With the aid of quicksilver, rivers were
made -- the Yangtsze, the Yellow River, and the great ocean -- the
metal being made to flow from one into the other by machinery. On
the roof were delineated the constellations of the sky, on the
floor the geographical divisions of the earth. Candles were made
from the fat of the man-fish (walrus), calculated to last for a
very long time. The Second Emperor said: 'It is not fitting that
the concubines of my late father who are without children should
leave him now;' and accordingly he ordered them to accompany the
dead monarch into the next world, those who thus perished being
many in number. When the internment was completed, some one
suggested that the workmen who had made the machinery and concealed
the treasure knew the great value of the latter, and that the
secret would leak out. Therefore, so soon as the ceremony was over,
and the path giving access to the sarcophagus had been blocked up
at its innermost end, the outside gate at the entrance to this path
was let fall, and the mausoleum was effectually closed, so that not
one of the workmen escaped. Trees and grass were then planted
around, that the spot might look like the rest of the
mountain."

The career of the Second Emperor finds an apt parallel in that
of Richard Cromwell, except that the former was put to death, after
a short and inglorious reign. Then followed a dynasty which has
left an indelible mark upon the civilization as well as on the
recorded history of China. A peasant, by mere force of character,
succeeded after a three-years' struggle in establishing himself
upon the throne, 206 B.C., and his posterity, known as the House of
Han, ruled over China for four hundred years, accidentally divided
into two nearly equal portions by the Christian era, about which
date there occurred a temporary usurpation of the throne which for
some time threatened the stability of the dynasty in the direct
line of succession. To this date, the more northern Chinese have no
prouder title than that of a "son of Han."

During the whole period of four hundred years the empire cannot
be said to have enjoyed complete tranquillity either at home or
abroad. There were constant wars with the Tartar tribes on the
north, against whom the Great Wall proved to be a somewhat
ineffectual barrier. Also with the Huns, the forbears of the Turks,
who once succeeded in shutting up the founder of the dynasty in one
of his own cities, from which he only escaped by a stratagem to be
related in another connexion. There were in addition wars with
Korea, the ultimate conquest of which led to the discovery of
Japan, then at a low level of civilization and unable to enter into
official relations with China until A.D. 57, when an embassy was
sent for the first time. Those who are accustomed to think of the
Chinese as an eminently unwarlike nation will perhaps be surprised
to hear that before the end of the second century B.C. they had
carried their victorious arms far away into Central Asia, annexing
even the Pamirs and Kokand to the empire. The wild tribes of modern
Yunnan were reduced to subjection, and their territory may further
be considered as added from about this period.

At home, the eunuchs gave an immense deal of trouble by their
restless spirit of intrigue; besides which, for nearly twenty years
the Imperial power was in the hands of a famous usurper, named Wang
Mang (pronounced Wahng Mahng), who had secured it by the
usual means of treachery and poison, to lose it on the battle-field
and himself to perish shortly afterwards in a revolt of his own
soldiery. But the most remarkable of all events connected with the
Han dynasty was the extended revival of learning and authorship.
Texts of the Confucian Canon were rescued from hiding-places in
which they had been concealed at the risk of death; editing
committees were appointed, and immense efforts were made to repair
the mischief sustained by literature at the hands of the First
Emperor. The scholars of the day expounded the teachings of
Confucius as set forth in these texts; and although their
explanations were set aside in the twelfth century, when an
entirely new set of interpretations became (and remain) the
accepted standard for all students, it is mostly due to those early
efforts that the Confucian Canon has exercised such a deep and
lasting influence over the minds of the Chinese people.
Unfortunately, it soon became the fashion to discover old texts,
and many works are now in circulation which have no claim whatever
to the antiquity to which they pretend.

During the four hundred years of Han supremacy the march of
civilization went steadily forward. Paper and ink were invented,
and also the camel's-hair brush, both of which gave a great impetus
to the arts of writing and painting, the latter being still in a
very elementary stage. The custom of burying slaves with the dead
was abolished early in the dynasty. The twenty-seven months of
mourning for parents -- nominally three years, as is now again the
rule -- was reduced to a more manageable period of twenty-seven
days. Literary degrees were first established, and perpetual
hereditary rank was conferred upon the senior descendant of
Confucius in the male line, which has continued in unbroken
succession down to the present day. The head of the Confucian clan
is now a duke, and resides in a palace, taking rank with, if not
before, the highest provincial authorities.

The extended military campaigns in Central Asia during this
period brought China into touch with Bactria, then an outlying
province of ancient Greece. From this last source, the Chinese
learnt many things which are now often regarded as of purely native
growth. They imported the grape, and made from it a wine which was
in use for many centuries, disappearing only about two or three
hundred years ago. Formerly dependent on the sun-dial alone, the
Chinese now found themselves in possession of the water-clock,
specimens of which are still to be seen in full working order,
whereby the division of the day into twelve two-hour periods was
accurately determined. The calendar was regulated anew, and the
science of music was reconstructed; in fact, modern Chinese music
may be said to approximate closely to the music of ancient Greece.
Because of the difference of scale, Chinese music does not make any
appeal to Western ears; at any rate, not in the sense in which it
appealed to Confucius, who has left it on record that after
listening to a certain melody he was so affected as not to be able
to taste meat for three months.